Advertising as we Know it Might be Dying

Google Faces Biggest Antitrust Investigation Crisis

The Ad robots live, but not forever. The mobile digital Ad duopoly is in trouble, with problems deeper than you will read about in the mainstream news.

A lot of scrutiny will be coming the way of Alphabet. The antitrust investigation into Google brought by 50 state Attorneys General in the last few weeks focused on Google’s advertising business.

Google Has So Many Products Now

Google, that’s now making headway in the cloud, is the biggest monopoly. Its dominance in search and advertising is a kind of data harvesting surveillance architecture. That it has Android, YouTube, Maps and Waymo One in the works is a potential threat to consumer privacy and freedom.

In July, when the Federal Trade Commission settled with Facebook over privacy issues, you had to wonder if Google would ever get its turn under the spotlight? Not just YouTube, but Google as a whole: Alphabet.

The FTC, EU, and 50 U.S. States Honing in on Google’s Antitrust Abuses

Fifty US states and territories, led by Texas, announced an investigation into Google’s “potential monopolistic behavior”. It’s sort of a big deal, as U.S. monopolies also pose serious barriers to entry for startups and for real innovation to occur in technology.

Google has also been caught working with Huawei and trying to enter China with a censored search product. This is not a company that’s interested in being held accountable.

Google is also reportedly facing an antitrust probe from the U.S. Department of Justice.

My friends at Medium don’t like it when I talk about their buddies at Google. That’s understanable, but for most of us who don’t live in Silicon Valley, this stuff is real to us.

Google is like a Utility — You cannot Opt Out

Google is like a utility, Google Home as a home worker is practically my buddy. Whatever pathetic data points Facebook has on me, nobody understands my mind as Google does.

This, we have to realize when data is the new blood and oil of the future economy, is also dangerous.

As they look to better understand how the ads business works, leaders are asking for more information on Google’s acquisitions, data collection policies, pricing models and more.

Capitalism will eat itself if AI is not regulated. Nobody is doing the things in deep learning and NLP that Google is able to do.

America is deeply negligent in terms of technology ethics and now China has replicated all of that in a totalitarian regime where firms are state backed. Thank you, Google, and much applause to Facebook to helping this take place for human history.

The List of Violations is Adding Up

Travel and job search may be other areas of scrutiny, since Google has its own products in those areas that compete with other businesses. Google has long been accused of favoring its own products in its app store and with Android pre-installs.

We basically know the way Google operates. The EU fines are proof of what we know.

The European Commission is hitting Google with a fine of 1.49 billion euros (some $1.7 billion) for “abusive practices” in online advertising, saying the search and advertising giant broke the EU’s antitrust rules.

Why does the U.S. not regulate its most powerful companies that are changing the future of capitalism forever? Does California not care what this will make us become?

The world is actually now pretty vulnerable to the impact of Silicon Valley and the Chinese Government. This is because we live in a data and surveillance economy. We are slowly transitioning in the 2020s and 2030s to an AI-driven reality. Machine intelligence and Google algorithms are already everywhere, on YouTube and Search and, soon, the rides we will take with Waymo One.

Google’s “bad behavior” has been noticed by its own employees on many accounts. But that’s not changing how its executives operate. For-profits first, and ethics… well, a distant last.

This is not rational Microsoft or innovative Amazon, this is the legacy U.S. internet Kingpin, Google. This is a different, freakish culture.

Google has Become a Broken Beast of Scale and Data Influence

We have to take regulating Google seriously, breaking up YouTube from Alphabet, so all of these things can be regulated properly. Google will become the 3rd horseman of the Western Cloud, and could eventually compete with AWS and Azure.

We have to regulate antitrust violations before it’s too late. In Facebook’s case, it was too late and this gave rise to companies like ByteDance that we won’t be able to regulate because they are located in Beijing and will be operating from different ethical paradigms.

From Gmail to Google Assistant, to its phones, Google’s powerful digital advertising presence is like a spider of the old internet.

Google’s ads business is sprawling and ubiquitously integrating into everything.

Google’s Dominance has Become an Element of Illness in Capitalism

According to eMarketer, Google will reach a milestone of surpassing 20% of all U.S. ad spending both online and offline this year. Google captures 74.6% of U.S. search ad spending.

Google is able to make $48.05 billion this year just in digital advertising.

Google’s behavior, as successful as it is, hasn’t been fair.

In the European Union, Google faces an investigation over claims it is driving competitors out of the market with its job-search tool. Google must face the mirror, if not in 2020, then one day.

When there is no longer a free market or competition, it increases prices, even when something is marketed as free, and harms consumers. Google’s monopoly on search and Ads has reached that point.

Where does it end?

Chrome is yet another product that’s in violation. At nearly every product consumer touchpoint, Google is doing things it shouldn’t.

Google shares data with other companies and how it tracks behavioral data on its web browser is pretty offensive. It’s also hastened the advent of global surveillance and data harvesting for profit, fueling wealth inequality and funneling cash into California and executive pockets.

Google tends to prioritize its own listings for travel searches, such as for flights or hotel rooms. Some travel search sites have struggled with what they claim are growing costs and dwindling return on demand of Google search. Google can force businesses into using it and spending even more!

That’s not technology leadership as it should be. That’s an abuse of your position, Google.

Instead of seeing the best information from across the web, Google steers us to its low quality ‘house’ products. Abuses on Google Maps are also taking place. I’m not an expert, but the writing is on the wall.

Google needs an upgrade, a redirection. Hopefully, the probes take this all seriously. As consumers, we have fewer rights than ever and are at the mercy of large technology corporations.

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